CHAPTER V. CERTAIN ADVENTURES IN ARABIA THE HAPPY.

On arriving at Aden; which was a place of call for every ship trading with India, Persia, and Ethiopia, custom-house officers at once came on board the ship, ascertained whence and when it had sailed, the nature of its freight, and how many were on board. Then the masts, sails, rudders and anchors were removed to ensure the payment of dues. On the second day after Varthema’s arrival, a passenger or sailor on board called him a “Christian dog, son of a dog,” the usual polished address of the proud Moslem to one who, albeit a co-believer, had not the good fortune to be born in the faith. This exclamation aroused a suspicion that he was a spy; for, a year before, Portuguese had appeared for the first time in the Arabian Sea, had captured certain vessels, and killed many of their crews. He was seized at once and violently carried off to the deputy of the Sultan of Yemen. Now this Sultan was an unusually merciful man, who rarely (Varthema says never) put anyone to death; so he was merely clapped into gaol, and his legs fettered with eighteen pounds weight of iron. On the third day of imprisonment, some Moslem sailors who had escaped in the warfare with the Portuguese, attacked the prison with the intention of slaying him; and the inhabitants were divided as to what they should do. The Emir’s deputy decided to spare the prisoners (another suspected person would seem to have been incarcerated with Varthema); and they languished sixty-five days in gaol. Then a message came from the Sultan, demanding that they should be brought before himself. So, instead of voyaging to Persia, Varthema, still in irons, was put on a camel and taken an eight days’ journey inland to Radâä. Ibn Abd-el Wahâb, Sultan of Yemen, was busy marshalling a large army. In it, were three thousand horsemen, born of Christian parents, but sold, while still children, by “Prester John,” as the Portuguese called the King of Abyssinia. These slaves formed the bodyguard of the Sultan. At this moment the rule of Yemen was disputed among petty despots, and the Sultan was bent on reducing the turbulent, rebellious tribes to his sole sway.

Varthema is brought in to the Sultan’s presence; his life hangs on a hair; it is as if the sharp edge of the scimitar were already at his neck; yet he does not lose his presence of mind. “I am of the country of Rûm, my lord,” he began; and he began with a “parliamentary expression” for, to an Arab, Rûm meant Asia Minor, recently the possession of _New_ Rome, _i.e._, of the Byzantine Empire. “I became a Mohammedan at Cairo (another trifling inexactitude). I came to Medina of the Prophet, to Mecca, and then to your country. Everyone says, sir, that you are a sheik” (a Mohammedan priest). “Sir, I am your slave. Sir, do you not know that I am a Moslem?” The Sultan called upon him to repeat the formula: “‘There is no God but the God: Mohammed is the Prophet of God.’ But, whether it was the will of God, or by reason of fear which gat hold of me, I could not pronounce these words.” Our hero was indeed lucky, for the merciful Sultan only ordered him to be taken to prison and kept there under strict guard while he should be away. For he was about to attack Sanäa, the ancient capital of Yemen. And so, “they guarded me for three months, supplying me with a loaf of millet each morning, and another in the evening; yet six such loaves had not satisfied my hunger for a single day; nevertheless, if I might have had my fill of water, I had thought myself happy.”

In the East, the body of an insane person is believed to be occupied by some spirit; and mad folk are therefore treated as irresponsible. Varthema knew this, and he, two fellow-prisoners, one of whom he twice speaks of as “my companion,” and yet another, “a Moor,” arranged that one of the number should pretend to be mad in order to help the others. The trick is time-honoured in the East; thereby David escaped the hands of Achish, King of Gath. Lots were cast, and the lot fell to Varthema. We can see him, like the Israelite King, “changing his behaviour, scrabbling at the doors of the gate, and letting the spittle fall down upon his beard”; he was allowed to go out, crowds of children following him and shying stones at him. In self-defence he had to store up a plentiful supply of like missiles in his garment and give a sharp return. “Truly,” says he, “I never was so tired with labour and worn out as during the first three days of my feigning.”

Now, the prison adjoined the palace; and there remained in the palace one of the Sultan’s three wives with her “twelve or thirteen very comely maidens, rather more than inclining to black. This queen” (so Varthema dubs her) “was very tender-hearted to me. She was for ever at her lattice with her damsels, staying there throughout the day to see me and to talk with me; and I, while many men and merchants were jeering at me, went naked before the queen; for she took very great pleasure in seeing me. I might not go from her sight; and she gave me right good food to eat; so that I gained my point.”

One of the most striking characteristics of the men of the Renaissance is the combination of great intellectual power and lofty enthusiasm with mediæval brutality. Now, the Sultana, in whose veins the warm blood of the East flowed freely, suffered from the dull monotony of the harem. She wanted excitement. She suggested to the supposed madman that he should slay and spare not; for the fault would not be imputed to him. He took the hint at once. He called on a fat sheep to declare its religion, repeating the very words which the Sultan had addressed to him: “Prove yourself a Moslem.” “The patient beast making no reply, I took a staff and broke its legs. The queen looked on laughing, and fed me with the flesh thereof during three days; nor do I remember to have eaten better. Three days later, I killed an ass, which was bringing water to the palace, in the same way; because that he would not become a Moslem. And, in like manner, I cudgelled a Jew, so that I left him for dead.” One of the gaolers, whom he declares to have been more mad than he, called him “Christian dog, son of a dog.” This was enough: a fierce battle by lapidation began—Varthema alone, on the one side; the gaoler and children on the other. Varthema allowed himself to be badly hit by two stones, “which I could have avoided easily; but I wanted to give colour to my madness. So I went back to my prison, and blocked the door up with large stones, and there I lived for the space of two days without meat or drink. The queen and others thought I might be dead, and caused the door to be broken open. Then these dogs brought me pieces of marble saying, ‘eat; this is sugar;’ and others gave me grapes filled with earth, and called it salt; but I ate the marble and grapes and everything, all mixed up.”

It was an enlightened custom in Mohammedan countries to examine into the mental condition of insane people at regular intervals. Rabbi Benjamin, of Tudela, the Spanish Jew, tells us that, in the sixth decade of the Twelfth Century, he found Commissioners in lunacy at Baghdad; although he also speaks of that barbarous practice of chaining the madman which obtained in England until some centuries later. Two Mohammedan Ascetics, who dwelt in the mountains as hermits, were brought to the prison to determine whether Varthema might be a person bereft of mere mundane reason through his exceptional sanctity, or only ordinarily mad. The hermits took opposite views on this knotty question, and spent an hour in violently contradicting one another. The prisoner lost all patience and, anxious to be quit of them, put a stop to the discussion by the simple device which Gulliver employed to extinguish the conflagration at Lilliput. “Whereupon,” says he, “they ran off crying ‘he is mad; he is no saint.’ The queen and her maidens saw all this, for they were looking on from their casement, and burst into laughter, vowing that ‘by God, by the head of the Prophet, there is no one in the world like this man.’”

Next day Varthema followed this up by laying hold of the gaoler by those two horns or tufts of hair which were then, as now, fashionable in Arabia, kneeling on his stomach, and so belabouring him that he “left him for dead,” like the Jew. The queen was again vastly entertained, and called out: “Kill those beasts.”

But it was discovered that, all this time, Varthema’s fellow-prisoners had been digging a hole through the prison wall, and, moreover, had contrived to get free from their shackles. The Sultan’s deputy was fully aware of the favour with which the Sultana regarded Varthema; and the lady knew him to be ready to carry out her commands. She ordered the prisoner to be kept in irons, but to be removed into a doorless lower chamber of the palace, and to be provided with a good bed, good food and perfumed baths. For, as the reader will guess, she had fallen in love with the captive. Sexual love among Arabians is anything but a refined or spiritual passion; and the harem has not been found precisely a temple of chastity anywhere,—mainly, perhaps, because it is a harem. And this lady possessed a temperament as sanguine and scandalous as any Messalina or Faustina or Empress of all the Russias. Alas! Fate doomed her to bloom unseen in Arabia, and waste her sweetness on its desert air. At the end of a few days, she started by bringing Varthema some dainty dish in the dead of night. He tells us how, “coming into my chamber, she called ‘Jonah! Come. Are you hungry?’ ‘Yes, by Allah!’ I replied; and I rose to my feet and went to her in my shirt. And she said: ‘No, no, not with your shirt on.’ I answered: ‘O Lady, I am not mad now’; whereto she: ‘By Allah, I know you never were mad. In the world there is no man like you.’ So, to please her, I took off my shirt, holding it before me for the sake of decency; and thus did she keep me for a space of two hours, gazing at me as if I had been a nymph, and making her plaint to God in this wise: ‘O Allah! Thou hast made this man white as the sun. Me, Thou hast made black. O Allah! O Prophet! my husband is black; my son is black; this man is white. Would that this man might become my husband! And while speaking thus, she wept and sighed continuously, and kept passing her hands over me all the time, and promising that she would make the Sultan remove my irons when he returned.’

“Next night the queen came with two of her damsels, and said, ‘Come hither, Jonah.’ I replied that I would come. ‘Would you like me to come and stay a little while with you,’ she asked. I answered, ‘no, lady. I am in chains; and that is enough.’ Then she said, ‘Have no fear. I take it all on my own head. If you do not want me, I will call Gazelle, or Tajiah, or Gulzerana to come instead.’ She spoke thus because she was working to come herself. But I never gave way; for I had thought it all out.”

Varthema had no desire to remain in Yemen, even should he mount its throne,—a far less likely event than discovery and a horrible death. “I did not wish to lose both my soul and my body,” he writes. “I wept all night, commending myself to God.”

“Three days after this the Sultan returned, and straightway the queen sent to tell me that, if I would stay with her, she would make me rich.”

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Varthema is the man to mould circumstances to his will: no web, however cunningly woven shall hold him prisoner; his keen wit is ready to comply with the Sultana’s request, if she will have his fetters struck off.

The lady fell into the trap. She manifests the clever, feminine guile of the harem in her dealings with Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, but she is no match for Varthema. The Sultan is a strong man and a mighty man of valour; but he is uxorious, and as wax in her hands. She ordered the prisoner to be brought at once before the Sultan and herself. Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, good easy man, asked Varthema whither he desired to go if he should choose to release him. The mendacious Italian replied: “‘O Lord, I have neither father nor mother; wife nor child; brother nor sister; only Allah, the Prophet, and you. You give me food, and I am your slave.’ And I wept without ceasing.” Then the artful Sultana reminded the Sultan that he would have to account to God, of whose anger he should beware, for having kept an innocent man so long time in prison. Abd-el-Wahâb proved as unsuspicious and benevolent as history declares him to have been; yet he was as firm and able as a ruler as he was bold and experienced in arms. His Sultana knew how to play on his merits and convert them into defects. He at once granted Varthema liberty to go whithersoever he chose. “And, immediately, he had my irons struck off; and I knelt before him; and kissed his feet and the hands of the queen. She took me by the hand, saying: ‘Come with me, poor wight, for I know thou art dying of hunger.’ When I was with her in her chamber, she kissed me more than a hundred times; and then she gave me excellent food. But I had seen her speak privily to the Sultan, and I thought she had begged me from him for a slave. Wherefore, I said: ‘I will not eat, unless you promise me my freedom.’ She replied: ‘Be silent, madman. You know not what Allah will bestow. If you are good, you shall be an Emir.’ Now, I knew what kind of lordship she desired to bestow on me; so I answered that she should let me get into fitter condition; for fear filled me with other than amorous thoughts. She replied: ‘By Allah, you say well. I will give you eggs, fowls, pigeons, pepper, cinnamon, cloves and cocoa-nuts every day.’[17] So, at these good words and promises, I plucked up heart a bit. To restore me to health, I stayed fifteen or twenty days in the palace. One day, she sent for me and asked if I would go a-hunting with her; which offer I refused not; and, at our return, feigned me to fall sick by reason of weakness; and so continued for the space of eight days; during which time she was unceasing in sending persons to visit me. One day, I sent to tell her that I had vowed to God and Mohammed to visit a holy man at Aden, who was reputed to work miracles.”

We may not count meanness among the _petits défauts_ of this lady of spacious passions. She was “well pleased” with Varthema’s suggestion, and provided him with a camel and twenty-five golden ducats—a sum which would go a long way in Arabia. We shall see presently to what use he applied it. Eight days’ journeying brought him to the holy man of Aden; and the second day after his arrival, he professed that he was cured. He wrote to the Sultana that, since Allah had been so merciful, he wished to see the whole of her kingdom. “This I did because the fleet which was there could not set sail again for a month. I spoke with a skipper in secret, and told him I wished to go to India, and would give him a handsome present if he would take me. He replied that he wished to touch at Persia first.” Nothing better could have fallen in with Varthema’s wishes. Meanwhile he would explore Arabia Felix.

So, having adroitly contrived to reject the love of the Light of the Harem without exciting her fury, and even coming by her purse, he turns the opportune gift to account, and fills up the month of waiting by a zig-zag camel-ride through Southern Yemen—the first and boldest European traveller in the district, and the one who has penetrated it must thoroughly. With the intention of doing this in his mind, he ends his chapters on “How the women of Arabia Felix are partial to White Men,” and on “The liberality of the Queen.”

His record of Southern Yemen bears witness to a shrewd observant eye and a tenacious memory. Probably he travelled mostly with caravans. He gives an account of the natural features of the land, its curious domesticated animals, its wild beasts, its vegetable productions, its trade, the colour, manners and dress of its strange natives—all borne out by a variety of independent testimony. He visited many cities. One, he found barbarous and poor; another, renowned for its attar of roses. Several of these towns were flourishing centres of trade. He even got to Sanäa, the walls whereof were so wide that “eight horses might go abreast on the top of them.” Apparently Abd-el-Wahâb had not yet conquered the petty chieftain, El Mansûr, who reigned there; so Varthema found himself in the domain of the Sultan’s bitter foe. We hear that rumour gave this ruler a mad son who would bite, and slay, and then feed on his human victims. Varthema again tells us of other madmen, Shiites and Sunnites, the rival sects of the Mohammedan world, who kill each other like dogs for Religion’s sake. At Yerim, he talked with many who asserted that they had reached their hundred and twenty-fifth year; but, since there was no registration of birth, we may venture to entertain our doubts. He tells us how it was the fashion throughout Arabia to twist the hair into horns, and how the women wore loose trousers. He came to El-Makrana, where “the Sultan keeps more gold than a hundred camels might bear; and I say this because I have seen it.” What became of that mighty bulk of gold? The Arabian chroniclers tell us the firm, merciful and increasing rule of Abd-el-Wahâb in Yemen had a tragic end: Turkish invaders captured him and put him to death, not in the heat of warfare, but in cold blood.

Varthema “ran some risk from the multitude of apes” (of which Niebuhr also speaks), and from “animals like lions (hyenas?). We passed on in very great danger from the said animals, and with no little hunting of them. However, we killed very many with bows and slings and dogs; and thereby passed in safety.”

On reaching Aden he repeated the trick which had proved so successful at Jidda. “I took shelter in a mosque,” he says, “feigning to be sick, and there I lurked all day long; but, at night, I went forth to find the skipper of the ship; and he smuggled me aboard.”